Downloading Eye Tracking Data from Iris

A.k.a. exporting eyetracking data

Setting Up

First, connect to the VPN and the BLab-Share (Fas-Phyc-PEB-Lab)on Iris.

Note for accessing Blab_Share on the eyetracker computer (or on windows in general)

Username should be university\your-netid (not your HarvardKey or email, although your-netid is associated with your HarvardKey account, which can be found by going to key.harvard.edu -> Manage Your Account & Services -> Scroll Down) Password is your HarvardKey password

Downloading the Data

• Open DataViewer from the Start Menu.

• Click the icon in the upper left hand corner that looks like this:

• A new window will ask you for the location of the files you want to import.

  • Click the button next to the filepath to select the location of your experiment's files.

  • You want the folder called 'results', which should be in your experiment's Desktop shortcut.

  • For example: Desktop/YM/YMjuly10/results

• Import. This may take a while depending on how many subjects you have.

• After the dataset has finished importing, go to File > Save As. Name your folder [Experiment][date_of_download].res (i.e. YM8_29_17.res)

• Set utf-8 as the encoding for the output files. Under Insperctor -> Preferences, make sure that "Use UTF8 Encoding" is checked.

• Select Analysis > Reports >Fixation Report.

  • Click the first Available Variable in the list, then scroll to the bottom of the list.

  • Hold down SHIFT on the keyboard and select the last Variable in the list, so that the entire group will be highlighted.

  • Move all the variables over to the box on the right using the right arrow button between the boxes.

• You should be prompted to save again. Save as "[Experiment]_fixrep_[first subj_num]_to_[last subj_num]" and click Save. Putting the subject numbers in the export will stop you from having to re-export the same participants more than once, and will also help you keep track of what's in the fixrep.

• Select Analysis > Reports > Message Report.

  • Select all of the variables and move to the box on the right.

  • Save as "[Experiment]_mesrep_[first subj_num]_to_[last subj_num]" and click Save.

To get this data off of Iris, you'll want to save it on the Fas-Phyc-PEB-Lab/experimental_projects/[your_study]/eyetracking_data server. If this is the first time you're exporting a fixation/message report for this study, create a folder within your study subfolder called eyetracking_data, then put your data in a subfolder called [Experiment][date_of_download]. In there should be the fixrep and mesrep files.

Make sure when you're dating things that you include the year also! You will be surprised at how many "feb_21"s happen while you're still collecting data!

You might have created a folder called Output when you were exporting your data. That's okay! If so, you can just pull that whole folder into the subfolder you created.

Processing Eyetracking Data

You can reference this eyetracking data cleaning template.